"Tut, my dear, you are in a great hurry!"
She went after him and laid hold of his sleeve.
"The devil take you!" he said, shaking her off.
She flared. She had been drinking, which was usual, but there were certain broad and gross courtesies which she demanded as a rebel that any man should give to her. She had a tongue like a live coal. It could scorch. And so she followed Jordan down Drury Lane, screaming the profane truth as she saw it, and inviting the world to share it with her.
She followed Jordan all the way to Spaniards Court, and he was not rid of her till he had closed Thomas Nando's door.
He went straight to his own room. He was angry now with an anger that had a touch of ugliness. There was no light, and he shouted down the stairs.
"Meg!"
"Bless us," said a voice, "who's that calling?"
"Hallo!—bring me a candle."
Meg stood open-mouthed at the foot of the stairs. She had not recognized Jordan's voice.
"Is that you, Mr. Jordan?"
"Who else? I want a light."
She ran for it. She climbed the stairs with devoted trepidation, and collided with Jordan, who came round the door as she was entering. The candle fell out of the stick and extinguished itself upon the boards.
"O, damn all women!" he said.
"O, Mr. Jordan!"
She fled, but she returned very soon with another candle, flustered and propitiatory.
"You did startle me so, my dear. I hope I haven't spilt the grease on your coat."
She would have searched for grease marks, but Jordan took the candle from her hand, and made it very plain to Meg that he wanted to shut the door.
"Dear, dear," she said to herself on the stairs, "what has come to the lad? I have never seen him so rough before. I'm all of a dither."
A fire was laid in the fireplace, and Jordan lit it and, pulling up a chair, watched the flames working through the wood. He wanted to be alone with his own anger and with his own angry thoughts, but before five minutes had passed he became aware of an agitated whispering on the stairs. The women again! He sat and listened, exasperated and impatient.
"You go up, Polly. He bit my poor head off. I don't know what's come to him."
Polly appeared reluctant to face this new and astonishing anger.
"I'm all of a tremble."
"Why, you silly slut, just knock gently and say as how the mistress——"
Jordan got up and flung open the door.
"What do you two fools want?"
They clutched each other.
"O, Mr. Jordan!"
"Oo-er!"
"Mrs. Mary asked me to say, sir, as how Mrs. Linacre is in the parlour, and she has need of you."
"What for?"
"How should I know, sir?"
"All right; tell her I'm coming."
They fled.
When Jordan entered the parlour he found Mrs. Mary looking very solemn, and Mrs. Linacre in tears. Mrs. Linacre was a sentimental creature, with prominent blue eyes and a receding chin, and when she talked—and she always talked very fast—she resembled a rabbit nibbling a cabbage leaf. Jordan disliked her. He stood by the door with his eyes on Mrs. Mary, quite untouched by Mrs. Linacre's tears.
"You sent for me, mother."
Mary Nando's brown eyes opened wide at him. When anyone surprised her she was apt to look reproachfully at the culprit, and Jordan felt reproached, especially when she nodded her head in the direction of Mrs. Linacre and made him understand that a soft voice should be used when a woman was in tears.
"I sent for you—because I thought you might be able to help us, my dear."
Jordan observed Mrs. Linacre, and Mrs. Linacre began to peep at him over the top of her handkerchief.
"O, my dear Mr. March, I'm a miserable woman, a most unhappy woman, sir."
She fell back into tears and was lost in her handkerchief and her sobbings, while Jordan looked at Mrs. Mary for some explanation of the storm. "What the devil is it all about?" said his eyes, "and what have I to do with it?" And Mrs. Mary, still puzzled and reproachful, beckoned him with her finger.
"Mrs. Linacre is in trouble."
Jordan's silence suggested that Mrs. Linacre's troubles were more than obvious.
"Robert has broken out. He has taken to wild living."
Mrs. Linacre dropped her handkerchief, drew a deep breath, and began to declaim.
"I'm a widow woman, and maybe I may have cosseted the boy too much, but he always was delicate and not quite like other boys. He was a little angel, Mr. March, till he got among some of the young men. Drink and women, that's all they think about! And we can sit at home and cry our eyes out. But I did try to be gentle with Robert. It had to stop, Mr. March; I had to try and stop him going to hell. I went on my knees to him to-night, I did. I said, 'Bob, will you break your mother's heart?' and then he said something saucy to me, and I lost my temper. Yes, I did, God forgive me. And I boxed his ears, and he went out in a rage. He called me an old fool, and swore he would go to 'Hackbut's Hole,' and nothing should prevent him."
She resumed her handkerchief, and hiding her face in it rocked to and fro.
Jordan looked at Mrs. Mary. He smiled, and Mrs. Mary thought it wicked of him to appear amused.
"The poor boy will be ruined by bad company. Any man with a heart inside him would go to Hackbut's Hole and bring him home."
"You want me to go, mother?"
Mrs. Linacre emerged again.
"O, Mr. Jordan, my boy clean dotes on you. He's made you into a hero. There's nothing he wouldn't do if you spoke to him like a big brother. Oh, I'm a most unhappy woman! He has learned to play cards!"
Jordan, seeing that her grief was in full flood again, thought that action was the best way of ending it.
"I'll go round to Hackbut's Hole. If Bob is there I'll bring him away."
Mrs. Linacre jumped up and embraced Jordan, while he stood very stiff and reluctant and looked at Mrs. Mary over the top of Mrs. Linacre's head.
"God bless you, Mr. Jordan. You're such a big fine fellow, and so strong. Do give him a word of warning. He'll take it from you. He's only a slip of a boy, you know."
And Jordan was touched at last beneath his anger by the thought of poor, eager, blushing Bobbie Linacre being plucked by some such fine vulture as Spider Doll.
"All right, m'am," he said; "I'll go round to Hackbut's and have a word with Robert. I won't come away without him."
Jordan put on his sword, for Hackbut's Hole was the sort of place where arguments were frequent between the gentlemen of quality who chose to amuse themselves in a world of bullies, cut-throats and thieves. Hackbut's lay at the end of Drury Lane. It was part ale-house, part gambling den. There was music to be had, and wild singing of bawdy songs. In the summer a garden with arbours and shaded lights gave a false glamour to the faces of the pretty ladies who might be found there. Pigeons were plucked, and even hardy old hawks lost an occasional feather in the game of guile and of laughter.
Hackbut's boasted a doorkeeper, a big Irishman with a purple face and sinister blue eyes, but he knew March by sight, and Jordan had no trouble at the doorway. The house had once been a place of some substance, and its great hall was now in the public room and much as it had been in the old days. The musicians sat in the gallery. There was a great fire on the hearth under the hooded chimney, and a long oak table stood across one end of the hall. Double doors from the paved passage opened into the hall, which was two steps below the level of the street.
Jordan went in. The place was none too well lit, for the candles on the tables where drinking or playing were going on left parts of the big room in shadow. A few women were scattered among the men. There were shabby coats and new coats, tarnished red and brilliant blue. A group by the fire were playing, and torn cards lay about the floor. The intent faces of the card players were like so many masks.
No one took much notice of Jordan. A drawer came up and asked him what he would drink, and
he ordered a glass of strong waters. Someone hailed him, a roguish fellow, who looked like a fat parson who had lost his frock.
"Hallo, March! Blow in here, my boy."
Jordan smiled at him.
"Sorry. I'm not staying long. I'm looking for a friend."
He had sighted young Linacre at one of the card-tables in a corner, and when the drawer brought him his glass, he strolled over to the table with the glass in his hand. There were three other men at the table—two gentlemen and a nasty-looking fellow with a hook nose, who might have come from Change Alley. Jordan had grown pretty quick at judging the quality of men. One of the gentlemen was obviously a man of good family; he had the poise, the large carelessness, the composure of a man of his kind. His name was Sir Hereward Lorimer. His companion was younger, noisier, and he had been drinking. Also, he had been losing money.
So had young Linacre, and Jordan knew how little he had to lose. The youngster was flushed, talkative, a little furtive. He had gone out of his depth and was floundering.
"Hallo, Bob!"
Jordan put his hand on Linacre's shoulder.
"Hallo!"
"What luck?"
"Nothing to boast about."
The other men looked up at Jordan. Sir Hereward Lorimer knew him, but the others did not. And Jordan sipped his strong waters and stood for a while watching the play. He was sorry for Linacre. What had to be done must be done gently.
There was a pause. The hook-nosed man spat and gathered up money. Lorimer looked at him with observant and calm contempt. The noisy young man in the red coat shouted for the drawer. Linacre was plumbing an empty pocket.
Jordan bent down.
"Bob, your mother is ill. Come along home."
Linacre stiffened.
"Look here—did she——"
"I'll tell you—outside."
Linacre pushed back his chair, but in an instant there were the makings of a row. The hook-nosed man cocked his head like a fierce and greedy bird, but it was the young man in the red coat whose hot temper chose to get out of hand.
"Curses on you, sir, breaking up a gentleman's party!"
"Well, as you will," said Jordan, smiling; "my friend is wanted at home."
The young man jumped up.
"I know that sort of trick."
"Believe me, sir, it is no trick."
"That's a lie."
"Then you are the liar," said Jordan, "if you will forgive me for saying so."
There was every promise of a nice disorder. Mr. Redcoat pulled out his sword, and the Jew gentleman, less fierce than he looked, fell backwards over his chair in his hurry to get out of the way. The whole room stood up; the drawers and the Irish pitcher-out of the contumacious came hurrying in. Jordan had his hand on his sword, but he did not draw it.
"You'll fight, damn you," said Redcoat.
"If you wish it."
The Irishman and the drawers closed in, but the quarrel was snuffed out by Lorimer, who had been sitting calmly in his chair. He rose; he laid a hand on his companion's shoulder; he looked at Jordan with his cool, world-wide eyes.
"Sit down, Dick. This isn't a gentleman's quarrel. You can't fight this young man. Sit down."
He forced Mr. Richard back into his chair.
"It was no fault of Mr. March's. I'm sorry, sir, and so will my friend be to-morrow. Be quiet, you big baby. Drawers, some more wine."
He looked steadily and not unkindly at Jordan, but he was the great gentleman, calmly self-assured, standing upon privilege.
"I am sorry, Mr. March, but there can be no quarrel between my friend and you. If you are a man of sense—as I judge you are—you will understand me."
Jordan had lost his smile.
"I understand you very well, sir. A gentleman may call me a liar, but it is no business of his to prove it on a fencing-master."
Lorimer nodded gravely.
"Exactly. I suggest, Mr. March, that you take your friend home and leave me to deal with mine."
And that was the end of it. Jordan took Bob Linacre home to his mother, but he did not feel himself among the blessed. His temper had a rough edge to it.
"Three doses of sour physic in one day," he thought; "a man must have a good stomach to cope with it!"
XIII
It may be that big and generous natures are less self-critical than smaller and more cautious ones, and Jordan did not question the change that came over him about this time. To put it pithily, he lost his smile, or rather—his smile lost its easy good-humour. He had sand in his shoes. The growing part of him had been balked, and being suppressed, it broke out in other directions. He was rougher and more fierce; he began to see enemies where he had been aware of nothing more than anonymous shadows; he was more combative, more dangerous to anyone who trod upon his toes.
Life has a knack of showing in her shop the very goods a man's mood may covet, and since Jordan's impulses were toward adventure and large physical excitements, Life gave him what he desired. There was nothing of the bully in him, and more of the aristocrat than he knew, and at this period he was very fierce in resenting the insolence of the baser man. He never sought a quarrel, but if it came to him he took it by the throat. His most notable fight at that time was with a coal porter who was the terror of all other coal porters and carters. This fellow was a hairy, saucy beast, who made a joke of butting his dirty person into any man who was a little cleaner than himself and pushing him off the footway into the gutter. Not knowing his man he tried the trick on Jordan in the most crowded part of Seven Dials, and Jordan knocked him down. There was a fierce fight, and the Knight of the Coal Dust had to be put into a cart and trundled home.
But this was a mere incident in the larger mob battles that developed during the winter. Political passions were very strong about this time, and if there were shouts of "God bless the High Church, Bolingbroke and Sacheverell," the Whigs replied with "God bless our Protestant King." Effigies were burned. The butchers brought out their marrow-bones and cleavers, and the Tory mob waxed insolent. Partizanship spread itself through the taverns and public-houses, and a man could discover the political complexion of such places in a most quaint guide-book—the "Vade-mecum of Malt-worms." The gentlemen of the Loyal Society who frequented the Whig mug-houses, such as the Roebuck, the Magpie, and many others, began to combine to fight the Jacobite mob. There were battles in the streets, broken windows, effigies captured and recaptured, bonfires lit and scattered. The rabble attacked the Whig mug-houses; the Whigs sallied forth and thrashed them.
Tom Nando being a member of the Loyal Society, Jordan was of the same persuasion, and soon in the thick of these street fights. On many nights he headed a party that went down to reinforce the Whigs at the Roebuck or the Magpie without Newgate, and mob-breaking became the sport of the winter. Jordan left his sword at home and carried a heavy cudgel. He found that a few determined and sober men were more than a match for a riff-raff crowd made up of sweeps, and knackers, and the scourings of the City. Given hard knocks they broke and ran. They were braver at stone-throwing and shouting than at standing up to men who came of the stock that had tempered the Cromwellian Armies.
Thomas Nando's own particular mug-house lay close to Covent Garden. It was a smallish house, kept by one Roger Bedstraw, and being small it was not very strong in its membership. The mob had left it alone, being more bitter against the larger houses, but Bedstraw happened to put himself in bad odour with one or two undesirable gentlemen who had discovered that his daughter was a pretty wench. Bedstraw was a stout little man, but he began to wear a worried look.
"We shall have them here one night, gentlemen. I trust you will stand by me."
Jordan turned in there one frosty night in January. He found the house nearly empty, there being no more than six members in the common-room, and three of these were men past sixty. Four of them were enjoying a quiet game of cards, and Jordan sat in front of the fire, warming his hands and talking to a new friend he had made—Roland Bliss, the actor.
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br /> Now, Bedstraw, who was nervous, kept one of his drawers in the street after dark as a scout, and about nine o'clock that night this fellow came running in shouting at the top of his voice:
"The Jacks, gentlemen; the Jacks!"
The card-party put down its cards and looked serious.
"Many of them, Will?"
"Two or three hundred, I reckon."
Bedstraw came into the room. He had a blunderbuss in his hand, and he looked white and excited; he had lost his head.
"The rabble's here, gentlemen. What are we to do? By gad, I'll fire on them if they attack my house."
Bliss and Jordan had gone to the window and opened it. They could hear the mob in the street beyond. Bedstraw's house stood in a yard off one of the streets leading out of Covent Garden, and the yard had gates, which should have been closed. A full moon was shining, and Jordan could see that the gates were open. He jumped out of the window, ran across the yard, and shut them in the very faces of the mob.
The drawers were closing the shutters over the lower windows, and Jordan found Bedstraw standing in the doorway, still clutching his blunderbuss. Bliss was trying to persuade him to lay it aside. The older men, rather scared, stood bunched in the passage, not knowing whether to run for it or to stay.
Jordan took control.
"We can hold on here. Someone ought to go and beat up reinforcements."
Bliss offered to go, but already the mob was hammering at the gates.
"Have you a back way, Roger?"
"No, sir. But if you get over the wall and into Pindar's garden, you could get through into Mug Alley."
"Good," said Bliss; "I'm not ratting, March; I'll try it."
"Good man. We'll give them something to shout about."
Bliss vanished, and Jordan pushed Bedstraw back into the passage.
"Has anyone got a thick hat? Give me that blunderbuss of yours, Roger."
Redstraw demurred, and Jordan took it from him and handed it over to one of the others.
"You'll only make trouble for yourself. Thanks, Mr. Peters, that's the very sort of headpiece I want. It will keep bottles and stones off. Now, I'm going to hold the door."
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